A real life burn book: the app that lets you rate other people, whether they like it or not

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare. Whether you’re the squeaky clean angel who’s friends with everyone and is getting on well at work, or the outspoken, opinionated one of your friendship group, nobody wants to know everything people think about them.

But with new app, Peeple, you can rate and review your friends and they will have no choice whether or not they see it.

The free iPhone app asks you to give people star ratings just as you might, say, a Netflix film, a restaurant or an Uber ride.

If someone gives you a negative review, you won’t be able to respond unless you succumb and download the app yourself. And, of course, you can’t delete them.

The Mean Girls Burn Book

In order to review someone, the app, which is due to launch next month, only requires that you enter the person’s mobile number – so you can review your exes, your colleagues and your mates.

To leave a review you must explain your connection to that person - much like when using LinkedIn – revealing if you know them professionally, personally or romantically.

Positive reviews will be posted immediately and negative ones will be delayed by 48 hours, pending disagreements.

Reviews are anonymous, so you will never be certain who made the comments, and sexism, profanity and health mentions are all banned.

Unsurprisingly, social media has not reacted positively to the news of Peeple, with many describing it as an awful idea that reduces people's personalities to a simple point system, and others not believing it is real.

“People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of decisions, why not do the same kind of research on other aspects of your life?”

“As two empathetic, female entrepreneurs in the tech space, we want to spread love and positivity,” Cordray says. “We want to operate with thoughtfulness.”

Nicole McCullough, who also founded the app, said that, for her, it would help knowing who she could trust with her children.

The team took to their Facebook page this morning, to clarify some elements about the app, saying that:

"People are genuinely good even though Yelp has over 47 million reviews and all the users are anonymous and in that 47 million reviews there are 79% positive reviews. (We are not anonymous as users of the Peeple app which should make our positivity even higher than Yelp)"

Hey Visitors to our page: We hear you loud and clear. 1. You want the option to opt in or opt out.2. You don't want...

Despite the positive intentions of the app creators, we suspect that it is a recipe for disaster. Either that, or everybody will be too afraid to download it in the first place. At the moment it is not confirmed whether the app will be available worldwide.